Haptic cues and feedback enhance the human-machine interface. Providing haptic feedback increases the amount of information available to a user in the operation of a device. Sight and hearing are two other important senses that individuals rely on to interact effectively with the outside world. As a source of feedback, however, sound has generally been attenuated or suppressed.
While increasing the number of sensory cues may be expected to enhance the human-machine interface, this has not been implemented effectively thus far. One reason that multimodal feedback (e.g., haptic and aural feedback together) has not been adopted, is that current means of providing aural and haptic cues may provide disparate sensory feedback to the user. In some devices, aural cues may be a by-product of means for producing haptic feedback and uncontrolled, i.e., aural feedback may not be designed to be a part of, or added to, the overall effect.
Where aural cues are used together with haptic cues, the aural feedback may be provided remotely from the source of the haptic feedback. For example, in a gaming environment, haptic feedback may be provided to a manipulandum, such as a joystick or gamepad. Aural feedback in such an environment may be provided through loudspeakers through a gaming control set or through loudspeakers proximate to a visual monitor or display. Current wired and wireless controllers allow a user to be several feet from the source of the aural feedback. Aural feedback provided to a user from a distance generally may not correlate well with related haptic feedback. Thus, such an arrangement leaves the user of a simulated environment with a somewhat unrealistic, and therefore less than satisfactory, experience.